hy did Atari release the the XEGS at a time when the 7800 was out?

[TMR]

Although this is the wrong forum to say it in - though - that the Atari 8-bit computers did have the colour advantage over the C64 with it's playfield graphics, with being able to choose the colours you like to use, whereas the C64 had a fixed colour palette - with what appears to be muddy colours.

"Muddy" colours aside because it's subjective and <personal opinion>i think they do a very good job</personal opinion> these things are trade offs since it wasn't really possible to have everything at once; the C64's sprites take up a lot of VIC-II real estate to do so they're traded off against colour. Meanwhile the Plus/4 goes the other way with a 121 colour palette and over eighty colours a scanline standing idle and the Amstrad CPC gets arbitrary placement of sixteen colours from a palette of 27 but neither have hardware sprites and the CPC is juggling twice the screen RAM.

 

In short for any hardware platform - which does provide something in the way of graphics hardware - it seems the full potential is sadly discovered, long after it has been sold out (discontinued). That it may take an enthusiast (away from a commercial development environment) or two - to show how it should have been done?

Sort of, but it's more an incremental thing throughout a machine's commercial lifespan and onwards; Coder A finds something new to play with and writes a game or demo around it, Coder B peeks at their code and thinks of something that'll improve it then bakes that into a release, Coder C rinses and repeats. You can see this evolution in the programs themselves and i've not doubt that some of the most creative (ab)use of these machines would come as a surprise to the people who designed them.

 

You can of course use DLI's or different areas in horizontal scrolling games. But that is in now way comparable to the color RAM stuff which of course isn't perfect but most here in the forum have agreed in endless threads that 16 colors which can be placed (almost) randomly trump 128 color pallet where only 4 can be placed randomly.

Wasn't i one of the people in those threads bigging up colour RAM...? =-)

 

But like i said, every 8-bit is about restrictions, limitations and finding ways to work around them; the colour RAM is helpful but it's got limitations; it's fixed in RAM so there's no double buffering (the C128 can) and multicolour character mode only gives eight of the sixteen colours because the top bit of the nybble selects high res or multi for that character cell. For all of these machines it's all about planning ahead and designing around what you've got to work with.

 

Slightly back to topic, has the 7800 the same pallet as the 8-Bits? I assume it has.

Generally speaking i believe so...? Where is Groovybee, he's usually here by now?!

[Lynxpro]

The Atari XE would have been slightly better had it had both the POKEY and GUMBY chips.

 

It had a POKEY chip like all Atari 8-bits. It was never slated to receive a GCC GUMBY chip [that was 7800 only in the plans]. It might've been able to handle an AMY - since Atari Corp did plan to release the 65XEM - but Atari Corp didn't seem capable to get the AMY working and thus no 8-bit, console, or ST ever received it. Shame.

[Prosystemsearch]

 

It had a POKEY chip like all Atari 8-bits. It was never slated to receive a GCC GUMBY chip [that was 7800 only in the plans]. It might've been able to handle an AMY - since Atari Corp did plan to release the 65XEM - but Atari Corp didn't seem capable to get the AMY working and thus no 8-bit, console, or ST ever received it. Shame.

AMY should have been given to Atari games to use on their arcade machines. Also, it would have been neat had the XEGS had not only a POKEY, but a Paula channel chip to make it different from the 65XE.

[Lynxpro]

AMY should have been given to Atari games to use on their arcade machines. Also, it would have been neat had the XEGS had not only a POKEY, but a Paula channel chip to make it different from the 65XE.

 

Atari Coin/Games originally planned to use the AMY. There's discussion of it in their company email that has been posted online. They were evaluating using AMY vs the Yamaha YM2151 in 1984 prior to the infamous July 1984 sale of Atari Consumer to Tramiel's Trammel Technology LTD which became Atari Corp.

 

Because the AMY didn't get finished, Atari Games went instead with the YM2151. Interestingly enough, the YM2151 is used in Gauntlet which was based upon John Palevich's earlier Atari 800-based dungeon game Dandy. Palevich incidentally also worked on the AMY.

 

 

The Paula wouldn't have been used unless Atari had successfully acquired Amiga Inc and their chipset. Regardless, the Paula was inferior to AMY.

Edited June 16, 2014 by Lynxpro

[Paul Westphal]

I have a xegs and like it for its quirkyness, but it's huge. My socketed 600xl with 64k does the same thing and is 1/3 the size and is easier to repair, except the stock video sucks ( svideo in the works ). Everyday people don't even know what the xegs is, so it's nice to show off at trade shows. I MAY upgrade it to stereo.

[Prosystemsearch]

What makes Paula inferior to AMY??

[Lynxpro]

What makes Paula inferior to AMY??

4 channel vs 16 for starters...

[Prosystemsearch]

4 channel vs 16 for starters...

How can you be so sure that the AMY chip has that many channels on it?? What if the article you read was faulty?? I know that it was planned to have noticeably more channels available than the Paula, but 16 in total?? :-o :-o

[Bryan]

Paula is a DMA chip. It plays samples by stealing bus cycles. AMY is/was a synthesizer chip so it's considerably more complex to use, but it can create waveforms internally.

[sack-c0s]

It doesn't really save processing power on a character-based display any more than just using two colours in a four colour mode on the A8 would. Not sure about if it'd save memory but i can't remember seeing a Megadrive game running the background in four colour mode either...?

 

The megadrive has planar tile definitions, so you would only need to store data for the used planes, which would save you some cartridge memory at least.

[Lost Dragon]

According to Atari User magazine: 'Atari had previousily planned to replace the sucsessful 2600VCS games machine over here with the 7800VCS.However officials at Atari UK persuaded their American cousins that the British market would benifit from a machine that could run cassettes-not just cartridges as in the case of the 7800.We feel this offers the best of both worlds, said an Atari spokesman'

 

End of quote.

[Lost Dragon]

Edge Magazines comments on it in Jan 2000:

'The existance of the 65XE still now rather beggars belief.It must be assumed that Atari sought to offer videogamers a taste of home computing several rungs down from it's ST series of the same era, but this market was already in rapid decline.As a gaming system the machine was in competition with with the company's own 7800 console;as a computer it was hideously unde-specced.It was in ploughing millions into launching products such as this that Atari showed tangible signs of loosing the plot.

Coleco's Adam system had famously proved that console/computer hybrids could not work, but no one at Atari had apparently noticed.'

[Bill Loguidice]

 

Edge Magazines comments on it in Jan 2000:

'The existance of the 65XE still now rather beggars belief.It must be assumed that Atari sought to offer videogamers a taste of home computing several rungs down from it's ST series of the same era, but this market was already in rapid decline.As a gaming system the machine was in competition with with the company's own 7800 console;as a computer it was hideously unde-specced.It was in ploughing millions into launching products such as this that Atari showed tangible signs of loosing the plot.

Coleco's Adam system had famously proved that console/computer hybrids could not work, but no one at Atari had apparently noticed.'

 

 

I consider that poor analysis on that writer in Edge Magazine's part in regards to the Coleco Adam. The Coleco Adam is not a case study in the failings of a videogame/computer hybrid, it's a case study in a botched launch and initial quality control issues. In fact, early sales were quite strong for the product. It was the initial execution that doomed the product's ultimate potential. Of course there were other factors, like the C-64 decimating the low end of the market that the Adam was meant to compete in, that were in play.

 

I also don't think it was necessarily a poor strategy to go with the XEGS or any of the other post XL Atari models. In retrospect, the issue was Atari had too many models to choose from by that point. A better strategy would have been to rally around one single model, i.e., give consumes only one choice and make that the new standard spec for software. The XEGS could have easily been that model, though any of the other 64K or greater models could have served the same function. Still, the same thing applied to Atari 8-bit computers by that point as it did with the Coleco Adam--there was no competing with the Commodore 64's combination of price/performance/mindshare.

[Jinks]

You guys should check out the 7800 programming section and notice there is 7800basic made now for it. The graphics to me are like night and day to the a8/5200.

It just would be awesome to have more programmers making games for it and 7800 basic makes that easy.. especially for you a8 basic wizards!!

[Retro Rogue]

 

I consider that poor analysis on that writer in Edge Magazine's part in regards to the Coleco Adam. The Coleco Adam is not a case study in the failings of a videogame/computer hybrid, it's a case study in a botched launch and initial quality control issues. In fact, early sales were quite strong for the product. It was the initial execution that doomed the product's ultimate potential. Of course there were other factors, like the C-64 decimating the low end of the market that the Adam was meant to compete in, that were in play.

 

I also don't think it was necessarily a poor strategy to go with the XEGS or any of the other post XL Atari models. In retrospect, the issue was Atari had too many models to choose from by that point. A better strategy would have been to rally around one single model, i.e., give consumes only one choice and make that the new standard spec for software. The XEGS could have easily been that model, though any of the other 64K or greater models could have served the same function. Still, the same thing applied to Atari 8-bit computers by that point as it did with the Coleco Adam--there was no competing with the Commodore 64's combination of price/performance/mindshare.

 

I'd have to agree with that. That's the problem some times though with using old magazines for material, it's often a crapshoot on whether you're getting actual facts vs. personal opinion masquerading as fact.

[Lost Dragon]

I'd personally never take any Edge article as FACT.As i've stated on here already, Atari UK's Darryl Still wrote in to correct them on a few points regarding articles they'd done for the news section and errors they had made.

 

The various articles again, you should never try and take as fact, it's simply 1 person's personal viewpoint/lookback on history, just as is any freelancers work for Gamestm/RG etc.Sadly Edge have a policy of never naming who wrote what, be it feature/news or review.

 

The interviews (even though your still clueless who exactly is doing the interview) with ATD etc are superb, as you guys will see once they get uploaded onto here.

[oky2000]

I am extremely happy with the xegs. It is one of my favorite consoles!

I couldn't agree more, I'd rather play Rescue on Fractalus or Star Raiders 2 than Mario/Zelda.

 

The pack-in games Flight Simulator and Bug Hunt....absolute turds and killed the machine sales in the shops IMO.

[oky2000]

 

I consider that poor analysis on that writer in Edge Magazine's part in regards to the Coleco Adam. The Coleco Adam is not a case study in the failings of a videogame/computer hybrid, it's a case study in a botched launch and initial quality control issues. In fact, early sales were quite strong for the product. It was the initial execution that doomed the product's ultimate potential. Of course there were other factors, like the C-64 decimating the low end of the market that the Adam was meant to compete in, that were in play.

 

I also don't think it was necessarily a poor strategy to go with the XEGS or any of the other post XL Atari models. In retrospect, the issue was Atari had too many models to choose from by that point. A better strategy would have been to rally around one single model, i.e., give consumes only one choice and make that the new standard spec for software. The XEGS could have easily been that model, though any of the other 64K or greater models could have served the same function. Still, the same thing applied to Atari 8-bit computers by that point as it did with the Coleco Adam--there was no competing with the Commodore 64's combination of price/performance/mindshare.

I thought Apple II variants were king not C64 in 1983-82 Coleco years?

 

Plus the Coleco Adam was like a $500 MSX spec machine which was just too much. Bloody leather companies!!

[oky2000]

 

Edge Magazines comments on it in Jan 2000:

'The existance of the 65XE still now rather beggars belief.It must be assumed that Atari sought to offer videogamers a taste of home computing several rungs down from it's ST series of the same era, but this market was already in rapid decline.As a gaming system the machine was in competition with with the company's own 7800 console;as a computer it was hideously unde-specced.It was in ploughing millions into launching products such as this that Atari showed tangible signs of loosing the plot.

Coleco's Adam system had famously proved that console/computer hybrids could not work, but no one at Atari had apparently noticed.'

 

 

1. Tramiel uses his personal wealth to get Atari.

2. Inherited company accounts bleeding money.

3. Stock dumping of XLs a resounding success in EU

4. Just a $799 to $999 'as entry level product' 520ST != business sense.

 

3+4 = retooling for new run of 800XL technology in 520ST case with numpad chopped off = quick stop gap. IIRC XEGS was designed to clear massive inventory of A8 carts?

 

It was all in the 4 Computer Buffs episode with debut of both machines had they looked. EDGE are Speccy owning losers so ignore their ideas and reviews. Most retro collectors know more.

Edited September 27, 2014 by oky2000

[oky2000]

Paula is a DMA chip. It plays samples by stealing bus cycles. AMY is/was a synthesizer chip so it's considerably more complex to use, but it can create waveforms internally.

Which is exactly how Portia (Paula)+ mhz 68000 + DMA bus in Amiga 1000 was meant to be used...not looped 20 second looped samples taken from Tesco tape decks like US Gold did lol you can blame dirty ST ports 1985-90. It's just 4 DACs with AM/FM registers really and meantto be used the same way Windows uss sound drivers this century.

[Gregory DG]

Reading Curt & Marty's book... and I'm at the chapters where they talk about how the 8-bit line was to be the successor to the 2600, but both Candy (400) and Colleen (800) ended up with keyboards. Debate went on for a while about if the 400 would have a detachable keyboard or not.

 

Personally, I think Atari should have released 3 models - the 8GS (8-bit Game system, like the XEGS but with an add-on keyboard sold seprately) in addition to the 400 and 800.

 

Hmm... Imagine what a game system in the style of the 400/800 would have looked like!

 

Anway, I think the XEGS is the fulfillment of what Atari should have done back in the day.

[Marius]

Another reason for me to love the XEGS, and that is a foolish reason… I know… is that XL/XE is inextricably connected to coding programs and doing 'serious' stuff with Bobterm, Syncalc and more creative stuff with the Chaos Music Composer.

 

On my XEGS it is a lot harder to do, since I do not connect the keyboard by default. So it is a GAME machine, and because it is not possible to get distracted by other (cool) features of my XL/XE computers I stay longer in the same game.

 

This has more to do with the way I look at things, than that this is a considerable benefit of the XEGS. But for me it works.

[Retro Rogue]

The interviews (even though your still clueless who exactly is doing the interview) with ATD etc are superb, as you guys will see once they get uploaded onto here.

 

As stated previously, you can't go blindly by direct interviews in a magazine either. They're often one person's take at the time and don't represent a full picture, and quite often these people have their own agenda to push. There were so many direct published interviews during the Atari Inc. era for instance that wound up either being slant or not the full story, and the ones during Atari Corp. are no different. Multiple sources (internal documentation, multiple direct interviews with others corroborating without being lead to corroborate, etc.) are always needed to get more of a clear picture on a specific topic.

 

I certainly agree they're interesting snapshots to give an initial frame of reference, but not much beyond that.

[Lost Dragon]

I personally find old magazine interviews interesting, espically in examples like Edge interviewing a source numerous times over a period of years (as they did with ATD, Jeff Minter etc).The claims made in an original interview never seem to be 'followed up' which i feel is a missed opp.ATD for example in early interview talk of the debugging work they did on Jaguar chipsets for Atari, so i'd of expected a later interview to expand further on that, once it became clear just how much of a blight the bugs were on the Jaguar hardware and see if ATD could go into depth a little more as to what they found, advised, how Atari responded etc.

 

Going purely off memory as my friend has the mags themselves, in case of ATD your dealing with the team being interviewed (know early Core Design interviews, Argonaught etc were treated in same manner, then in later years you get key figure from...being interviewed).

[Lost Dragon]

Plus in certain areas they can clear up certain miss-leading snippets of information doing the rounds that can give a degree of 'False Hope' to a community that 'Lost game' code will 1 day surface.Case in point:Jez San talking to Edge.Internet claims had Jaguar CD Creature Shock as being at least started/nearly finished (depending on what you read and where).In 1 simple answer Jez cleared that up (and was'nt even directly asked about it, lol).No need for multiple sources (although i have had reasons why etc confirmed by at least 2 other sources in emails/interviews i carried out) and hey presto, you can strike another one off the list.

 

In a case like that, you've the answer you were looking for, but since it's in a niche publication (as Edge proudly is) many were never aware of it and thuis the myth that game was started still exists.